Mysteries of the Jaguar Shamans of the Northwest Amazon

Chapter 6: The Birth of the Child of the Sun, Kuwai

233 6 The Birth of the Child of the Sun, Kuwai The child Kuwai is an extraordinary being—the child of the sun, who is spirit, animal, and person all in one. Part jaguar, part sloth or other tree-living animal, he can transform into a set of beautiful , melodious songs, or he can transform into a mysterious, monstrous, all-consuming, demonic Other. Kuwai is a complex mixture of aspects of being, many “intentionalities” that don’t necessarily all work together but which produce changes in the world and especially in the initiates.The narrative of his life,death, and remaking into sacred flutes and trumpets contains in effect a whole worldview, Weltanschaung, of the Baniwa. It is a foundational myth, one in which the universe and society—meaning every important transformative social process—come into being and are reproduced over time. narrative of the kuwai story: performance, explanation, and methodology The original narrative of the story of Kuwai is approximately twentyeight pages of single-spaced text, which would make a book in itself if accompanied by images from the landscape or drawings. 234 Transmission of Shamanic Knowledge and Power Given that the principal objective of this book is to understand the relationship of the jaguar shamans to Kuwai, what is required here is a version that is both acceptable to Baniwa pajé narrators and readable for a wider public.Such a version exists in the collection of Baniwa narratives entitled Waferinaipe Ianheke (Cornelio et al. 1999), which is based on a narrative taped in 1977 by the most knowledgeable elder at that time on the upper Aiary River, a Hohodene named Keramunhe (Ricardo Fontes). That version and all other stories in the book were translated into Portuguese with the assistance of several pajés and narrators in 1997. To perform this story requires great concentration and skill to get across an underlying moral and message that lay listeners will begin to understand and that the pajés understand very well. The narrator was considered by everyone on the Aiary to be outstanding , but many other narrators contributed details to the story that will be useful to consider as exegesis for the interpretations each chapter provides. The narrator was not a maliri pajé, but he was a well-known “chant-owner” with extensive knowledge of the stories and the chants that go along with them. He was a dance leader (manderokai iminali), and his singing of dance songs and imitations of the flutes formed an integral part of this narrative. It is as though the narrative, as a whole, uses the sacred language of cosmogony to its fullest extent, which makes it such a demanding performance to observe. For the purposes of interpreting this foundational myth, the story can be divided into three major episodes, consistent with the way narrators themselves present the entire drama. The three parts are (a) the conception and birth of Kuwai (chapter 6); the first initiation rites (chapter 7); and the struggle between men and women over ownership of the sacred flutes and trumpets, the “body of Kuwai” (chapter 8). It is possible to divide the first initiation rites into two parts corresponding to a complete cycle The Birth of Kuwai 235 of exchange festivals, but it would not make any sense to consider them as separate chapters. Complementary to the narrative, a drawing of the young boy Kuwai was made with the help of a jaguar shaman kin of Mandu and is reproduced in appendix B with permission from Omar González-Ñáñez (2007) from his book on narratives of the upper Guainia.This is an extraordinary drawing accompanied by numerous bits of information,including names of body parts,referring to both the initiation themes of the flutes, the“heart-soul”of Kuwai containing much sickness; the umbilicus containing medicine; and the crown of his head,where sickness and remedies are combined. This drawing allows us to see clearly how Kuwai’s body, as a “boy, ”is similarly mixed,both as the holes that produce the sound of flutes and the most important forms of sickness in Kuwai’s body and heart-soul. As in the pajés’ drawings of the universe, it is the arrangement and the relations between the parts that are of greatest importance, for Kuwai’s body is totally perforated on its appendages, with holes corresponding to the pairs of flutes and trumpets that eventually were fabricated from...